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Monthly Archives: December 2011

Animal rights are the belief that animals have an intrinsic value separate from any value they have to humans,and are worthy of moral consideration.They have a right to be free of oppression,confinement,use and abuse by humans.

Mammals

“A variety of theoretical and empirical arguments have been put forward to the effect that consciousness is shared across all mammals. Seth, Baars and Edelman (2005) argue that the neural processes essential to human conscious — widespread reentrant activity in the thalamo-cortical complex — involve anatomical systems that are shared among all mammals (and perhaps more widely). Panksepp (reviewed in 2005) takes a similar approach, although focusing on the neurophysiological systems involved in the ‘core emotions’. Although in both of the above proposals, the authors acknowledge that consciousness may be more widespread than just mammals, they argue that in the case of mammals, the weight of evidence based on homology of relevant neurophysiological systems is overwhelming, whereas outside of mammals, the inference is more tenuous because of the biological differences in non-mammalian animals. Further, it should be kept in mind that all of the following proposals imply that consciousness is widely shared among mammals. Hence, the position that all mammals are conscious is widely agreed upon among scientists who express views on the distribution of consciousness.” via Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 6.3, Mammals.

Every dog is unique. Breed, diet, exercise and natural environment play a large part in determining your dog’s personality and working intelligence. Personality characteristics can either enhance or interfere with your dog’s capacity to learn.

Any dog person will tell you that all breeds differ greatly in their intelligence and temperament. There are also differences in male and female dogs.

Stanley Coren, author of “The Intelligence of Dogs” mentions that most judges recognize that there are definite differences in the intelligence and trainability of the various breeds. Experts say that even in the dullest breeds, some dogs will work well, whilst in the most intelligent breeds, certain dogs show no willingness to learn.

Manifest Intelligence is the sum of all the dimensions of intelligence that a dog displays. Canines like humans do not ever achieve their full psychological potential. Experts measure the difference among the different breeds and see how each breed reaches a certain level of performance and what is the absolute maximum performance that a dog of any given breed may be expected to achieve.

Interestingly enough most experts placed Border collies in the top category, then the Poodle, German shepherd and Golden retriever. What surprised me was that the Afghan hound, the Basenji and chow chow were a few of the ten worst breeds for obedience training. All the herding dogs and retrievers had the highest scores and the hounds the lowest- not surprising.

What about mixed breeds? Today most of us will adopt our next furry best friend and many of these great canines will be a mixed breed. How does one determine the intelligence of these dogs? It’s well known that the particular collection of genes that define a breed is determined by its genetic makeup .The particular collection of genes of a certain breed enable us to determine and predict a dog’s behavior, size, shape and coat coloring. What happens when we crossbreed is that we lose some of the predictability and we do not know which genes will be passed on by each parent and how they will combine.

According to John Paul Scott and John C. Fuller, who carried out selective breeding experiments at the Jackson Laboratories in Bal Harbor, Maine, their results revealed a simple rule that seemed to work each time.

Their conclusion was that a mixed breed dog is most likely to act like the breed it most looks like. The more of a blend of the two breeds in physical appearance, will result in a dog’s behavior having the blend of the two parent breeds. So first decide what your mixed breed most looks like, and then use that as your prediction for a mixed breed dog’s working and obedience intelligence.